We're running a special series about the worst incident of election violence in American history, an event that is almost forgotten today. It happened a century ago on Election Day nineteen twenty and the town of a Kohe, Florida. The victims were hundreds of black residents. The perpetrators were their white neighbors. And the reason was that black citizens had
gone to the polls and tried to vote. One hundred years ago in the center of Florida, just a few miles from where Disney World stands today, there was an exodus. Hundreds of black families piled their children into wagons. They trudged all night along roads and railroad tracks and through sugarcane fields. They barely escaped with their lives. Dozens of their loved ones did not. They were lynched, shot, burned
to death in the wreckage of their own homes. Today, this is forgotten, largely missing from history books, handed down only as a secret memory between generations of the families who escaped. But in nine November nine, the town of Okoe, Florida, wasn't a secret. It made headlines around the world. There was a grand jury investigation, even a hearing before Congress and Americans black and white, knew exactly why it had happened. They knew what it meant. This exodus was a warning
danny black citizen who dared to try to vote. I'm Eugene S. Robinson and this is the election day massacre from Ozzie Media. In two thousand and twelve, Randolph Bracy became the first representative from a new state House district in central Florida. Less than one sixth of the members of the Florida House were black. I I was looking for office space after I won my election, and I had recently moved to Koe, and I decided to put
my office in Oh Koe Koe. It's just a dozen miles from Disney World, but it still has the feel of a small town. It's a pretty lake, splash park for the kids, but beloved ice cream stand, the perfect place to live and work. And I remember it was an African American woman, older woman, and she almost lost it when I thought I was moving my office to Koe.
But she was from the age where she the era where she remembered that it was a sundown town where you couldn't be Oh Koe unless you had some business and you had to be going before dark. Bracy now, a Florida State Senator, was shocked, but many people who live in the area longer are not. Historian Marvin Dunn is professor emeritus at Florida International University. He grew up in Central Florida. My father told us told me and my brothers about picking oranges in in Okoe. When they
would leave to come back to the land. If the driver of the white drivit lanage until almost dark, they would walk out of Okoe rather than be cought after dark. Koe is a diverse community today, and it had a thriving black population long ago, but for half a century of Coe had almost no black residents. But this was in the ninety late nineties, and they told me, please, don't tell anyone now you're coming here, that we've invited you here, that we're showing you where the black communities
used to be. Paul Ortiz is a professor of history at the University of Florida. Don't tell anyone because it could put your life in jeopardy. It could put in jeopardy. There were good reasons why no black person wanted to live there for so many years. A Koe resident and community historian Pamela Grady. You can see that's what happened there. You can feel that energy there. It's still it's still
alive and well. What happened in a Koe year century ago remains the worst incident of election day of violence in US history. What happened in the Koe was not an altercation. It was more than a lynching or shooting or riot. What happened in the Koe was a massacre. And what happened is all too relevant today. Florida is
still actively involved in vota suppression. I didn't even get why she was so scared for me, and then I kind of learned the history, and I think it's so appropriate to talk about it and this year election because it is still to the state of bloody. It's day in American political history have an on a presidential election. One hundred years ago, African Americans in Florida were preparing
for an historic election. Soldiers had come home after serving their country in World War One, the local economy was booming, women had earned the right to vote. The promise of America seemed closer than ever before. And then, in a night of unspeakable violence, everything changed. There was no question who was in charge in central Florida a century ago. Often at the time, many of law enforcement and local politicians here were also members of the goog Lux client.
Pamela Schwartz is the chief curator of the Orange County Regional History Center in Orlando, Florida. One prominent white citizen at the time estimated at about nine of law enforcement officers, judges, and lawyers and their Coe area were clan members. There's a new rise in the Ku Klux Klan um. There's a resurgence of white supremacy. Uh, there's an active movement for white supremacists to try to disenfranchise black voters. In the days leading up to the election in November nineteen twenty,
the k k k was especially active. There are marches throughout the state of Florida, Jacksonville, Daytona, Orlando of Ku Klux Klan sending that same message of do you not get out to vote if you're black or else. In Orlando, around five hundred hooded men paraded behind three figures on horseback. They used megaphones to get their message out. Paul Ortiz is the author of Emancipation Betrayed The Hidden History of black organizing and white violence in Florida from reconstruction to
the bloody election of nineteen twenty. In Daytona of the night before election, they marched through Mary mccloyd Bethun's campus, you know, and the municipal authority um controlling the electricity actually kind of electricity, you know, to Daytona industrial world school, so that the clan could march through with their torches and terror tactics and and accurately scary. It's just all of this stuff is boiling and boiling, and the events of November second and third send it over the top.
This was an event hundreds of years in the making, from the first enslavement here up through black holes and Jim Crow laws and the suppression of of women, the suppression of black voters, the suppression in all these different ways leading up to something like this event erupting. Five years ago, Florida was under Spanish rule. It was a sanctuary if the slaves were able to escape the British colonies.
But after Florida came outo the control of the United States in eighteen nineteen, President Thomas Jefferson sent American troops to help capture former slaves and returned them to their chains. Slavery ended with the Civil War, but segregation and ideas of white supremacy remained strong. Center Florida was especially attractive to former Confederates. Marvin Dunn is the author of a
History of Florida through Black Eyes. Center Florida was a was a magnet for people who had lost the Civil War because Keith and Florida was untouched by the war. Uh and Center Florida the cattle that said, the Confederate army. So businessman in Center Florida made money during the war while other parts of the South are being destimated by
the war. By nineteen twenty, Florida's economy was booming. The citrus industry was exploding, so a lot of black people were chanted into Center Florida for that reason to work. The town of a Koe, with its lush orange groves and farms nestled along Stark Lake, was especially attractive a number of black people, black men in particular, had managed to get property orange grose on their own. There's a man by the name of Moses Norman. Now Moses Norman
had lived in this community for some thirty years. He was not just some you know, young guy. He was a well established individual, well known in town. He had his own car. He was known to be a labor broker. Most Norman at the time was driving around in a car that was worth about seventy five to a hund thousand dollars. Pamela Grady is the executive director of the July Perry Foundation. That's a Mercedes, that's a Jaguar, you know, that's what he was driving around. And at a time
when nobody even had cars. There was only maybe one or two other cars in the whole town of a Koe, you know, And here's this black guy driving through the town, this nice car. You know. They had to infuriate him. The foundation is named for Mose Norman's good friend, another prominent black Cystan of a Koe, Julius July Perry. Nothing really happened in ol Koe without him. Florida State Senator Randolph Bracy. He was kind of like a broker or even white businessman who wanted to come in and do
some farming transaction of what have you. He ran the town. July Perry and most Norman were pillars of the Kohe community. Historian Paul Artis they were successful individuals. They're very hard workers, they were they're very good family men. Um they were
highly respected. And the reason I mentioned the term highly respected, and this is the most important element I think about Most Norman and July Perry and why why they represent such a threat to white supremacy, Because these two exceptionally respected men were involved in an exceptionally threatening activity helping
black citizens vote. In the wake at World War One, black Floridians had organized a remarkable statewide voter registration movement, and the movement really prested and built momentum as African American soldiers returned from from Europe. A lot of black pressions came back to the South and the third in Europe, and they were not going into a commodate themselves to the racism that was in there in that community, and most Norman and Gelatter in particularly were among those who
came back with that attitude. The two veterans joined hundreds of other Floridians who were mobilizing to combat white supremacy. In nineteen twenty, there is a shoot black voter registration drive that's supported not only by the black community, but also by white Republicans. Not all of them, most of them. This was at a time when most African Americans were
members of Abraham Lincoln's Republican Party. In many places in the South, blacks could not even join the Democratic Party, and thanks to the Nineteenth Amendment, women would be voting for president for the first time in nineteen twenty. This is a whole new voting block and that includes black women. And what it's doing is it's causing a lot of tension.
People don't always accept change, and so with this you also see sort of a resurgence and an ongoing rise with white supremacy in the Kuklux Klan clan members were not the only white supremacists trying to hold back the new wave of black voters. Once the white you know, white white elites and white media and white leaders realize this is happening, they use their op ed space, their their banner headlines. White women, it's up to you to save the republic. This is the greatest crisis in our
nation's history. And a typical op ed will say, h white ladies, do you want your Negro washer women to lord over you, to take control? Do you want that Negro custodian to marry your daughter. The threats heated up as the election of approached. White supremacies in a crisis. They're much more honest in races today because they're very blunt about it. They're like, white supremacy is our way
of life as an American. Some white Republicans in Orlando, including a local judge named John Cheney, helped July Perry
and most Norman organized black voters. About a month before the Echoen massacre, they receive a letter from the Florida ku Klux Klan signed by the ku Klux Klan that basically says, stop or else, sir, while stopping in your beautiful little city this week, I was informed that you are in the habit of going out among the Negroes of Orlando and delivering lectures explaining to them how to
assert their rights. The grand master of the Florida ku Klux Klan reminded them what happened when white people tried to help black voters during reconstruction. You will remember that these things forced the loyal citizens of the South to organize clans of determined men who pledge themselves to maintain white supremacy and to safeguard our women and children. We shall always enjoy white supremacy in this country, and he
who interferes must face the consequences. So there is a threat, there is and this is this is a primary starts. We have the original in our museum collection that that that states this. Just days before the Echoe massacre, there are marches throughout the state of Florida. If you ask a black person to register about Florida, you're asking them to take the risk. They're asking them to risk their lives. You're asking them to risk their livelihoods, You're asking them
to risk their physical safety. On the morning of November, two black citizens of a Koe, Florida made a heroic decision. They ignored the clan marches, the torches, the letters, and the threats. They prepared to exercise their most fundamental democratic right to vote. They knew it would be challenging, but they had no idea of the horrors that awaited them. You can hear the election Day massacre miniseries just search for flashback wherever you find your podcasts.